Fabula Ultima Plot Map (Plains)

I still have some Fabula Ultima on the brain, so I’m going to design a plains area Transmission and plotmap starter, and if I get the ambition, I’ll do a couple additional rolls to fill it out. I’m going to lay out my thought process for each area below, and then the details will appear after the chart.

Connections means I need to come up with some neutral-to-friendly NPCs, easy enough. A village might work here if I want the community to be considered over the like… physical place of the Village, that would be a Location instead. The Connection is someone who will probably talk to the party before swinging at them, at least.

For a plains area, we have a lot of possibility space, so we can cast a really wide net for Events and Locations, which is nice. Events in Technoir are sort of charged situations that the party finds themselves stumbling into or getting wrapped up into, such as a high speed chase, or a high budget movie shoot where they have to try to find someone through the set, etc.

With Factions, I need to cover the spectrum of helpful to harmful, but I think I should lean Harmful and neutral. Connections are for allies, factions and threats are here to muddy things up.

Objects! The Weird Shit! Well, normally it’s for potent stuff, but I think here I can use it to give some gear, meterials, or artifacts.

Threats I want to make a mixture of Villains and maybe groups, and maaaaybe some environemntal, magical or natural issues. I think, though, putting the same person in the Threats and Connections area might be fun, as it could paint the circumstances of their introduction to the area. Then if I rolled them on the opposite, there could be either something souring, or a begrudging alliance.

I love doing thse because I make them row by row, and then when it’s done I start looking at everything and laugh at how I can connect different things. I’m keeping these pretty generic so I don’t get to link to my own towns or backgrounds, but that could easily be changed. For example, Ven could be someone who moved away from Waystone, forgoing his assigned name for the element he attuned to. Or he could be an extension of Waystone interests, who knows!

Some of the items are obviously synergetic, such as Cave In and the Eyorn Mines, but the Cave In could be a building collapsing, or an unrelated cave that the party is camping in, and the mine could hold something besides the Aether-fused Iron, but could be a hideout for the pirates.

Below I’ll have the basic information for all the cells and stat blocks for the Threats and people that need them. Feel free to disregard whatever, or to change any if you want to use this yourself.

Connections

• Riva Well - Human Female travelling merchant.
• Ven - Mayor of Ard, an older tanned man with silvery blond hair.
• Tonba Pun - Retired mercenary on a food journey around the world.
• Ever Tripen - Scholar and Mage, Surveyer for the Institute.
• Onnida Pine - Otterfolk Explorer, she has a daring personality that can get her into trouble.
• Scrabbes Scraw - Ratfolk scoundrel.

Events

• Heavy Rain - Simple environmental issue that can complicate an adventure and requires a check to avoid taking the status condition Slow and Vulnerable to Bolt damage. Difficulty 10 to avoid Slow, 13 to avoid both.
• Festival of the Forked Bolt - A festival held in the plains celebrating the power of nature and a contest of constructing lightningrods. Storm is summoned by local mages so the event can be sure to happen.
• Pirate Raid - Fontaine’s Pirates/a rival group attacks someone or something nearby, maybe the party.
• A Crime Scene - The site of some crime
• Royal Decree - Someone from a place of authority is issuing some sort of new law, regulation, or restriction, either temporary or permanent.
• Cave in - Something has collapsed. Cave, optional.

Factions

• The Pestrada Family - A travelling circus troupe, founded by the Pestrada family, with the patriarch still ringleading after 30 years of new additions.
• Fontaine’s Pirates - Pirate crew who follows Lennox Fontaine
• Townsfolk of Ard - The people who live in the small town of Ard, a tight knit community.
• The Arcane Institute - The leading magical institution has surveyors all over the place.
• Bray’s Band - A grizzled bunch of mercenaries, led by married couple Winry and Fenx.
• Royal Guard - A procession of gleaning knights protecting someone important.

Locations

• Ard - A small village in the countryside
• Manabloom River - A river where some bends have an unusually high level of water/ice elemtnal magic.
• Eyorn Mines - A well-worn mine where practical and precious metals are mined.
• Rasp Flats - An elevated plateau, home to sharp grasses and thistles.
• Secluded Thicket - A dense group of trees and bushes that hides something within.
• Encampment - A place where many people have gathered.

Objects

• Glove of Air - This was supposed to be globe of air, but I liked the typo I made more. - Artifact - A quasi-transparant silken glove that allows the wearer to feel the air currents around them, no matter how subtle.
• Terra Force - 2-Handed Martial Weapon - Axe - Martial - MIG + WLP - HR+15 Earth Damage, Ignores Resistances, Targets M.Def. - 1250z
• Aether-Fused Iron - A charged chunk of Iron that can be used as either a material for a Project or a reagent for rituals of the Ritualism, Entropism, or Spiritism domains. Value 750z
• Pearlite - A collection of small pearls fused together. Artifact - When placed in a container with another palm sized object, the other object becomes dry within 5 minutes.
• Pixieweave Robe - A robe imbued with natural healing magics. - Sage Robe - Dex + 1, Ins + 1, -2 Initiative - Spells you cast that recover HP recover 5 additional HP, 10 at level 40+. 1700z.
• Starblood Crocus - A plant that blooms during the new moon. Reagent for rituals of the Chimerism, Arcanism, Elementalism, and Ritualism domains of Rituals. Value: 800z if used in a project.

Threats

• Lennox Fontaine - Ratfolk Pirate Captain - Daring, Protective of his men, greedy
• Flood - A huge amount of water rushes in and threatens someone, somewhere, or something.
• Razor Wolves - Huge, predatory wolves that hunt in groups of 3-5 that are covered in sharp quills
• Winry & Fenx Bray - Leaders of the Bray’s Band - Winry - Fierce, Ratty, Defiant. Fenx - Tall, Earthy, Rude.
• Carlisle Es - An experienced bounty hunter, burly cat man with green fur. Professional, Paid, Amiable.
• Fire Sprites - Precocious fire spirits that have wandered over to cause some “trickery”.

Let’s Roll up a Plot Map.

First roll is a 1 and a 6. Looking at the plotmap, I think I want to start with a threat, so we’re taking Lennox Fontaine, the ratfolk pirate captain my party had faced when on an airship. Next, I rolled a 2 and 3, which is actually hilarious, because it’s either the event Pirate Raid or the faction Fontaine’s Pirates. Fontaine is the threat, so I think I’ll pick Pirate Raid for this. Finally, a 3 and 4, a Faction, The Arcane Institute or a Location, the Eyorn Mines. I think the most interesting one here is The Arcane Institute. We now have 3 points on the map, and we can start to connect them, pretty straightforewardly I would think. The Pirates are Loyal to Fontaine, and Fontaine is robbing or planning to rob a survey team from the Arcane Institute.

Good setup, but if I want this as a drop-in adventure, I think I need one more piece, so another roll we go. Normally you start with 3, but more rolls can help you make the situation more developed at the start. A 5 and a 6. Don’t think a threat works, but now there’s the Starblood Crocus, a rare flower that can be used for Rituals or maybe something else. So now I have a good idea of what’s going on here.

So we know the pirates are Loyal to Fontaine, the pirates and Fontaine are going to steal from the Arcane Institute survey team, who are harvesting Starblood Crocus for something, either a big ritual, some potion, or whatever other magic stuff they’re up to. From here, I can spin out a quick adventure to fill in a bad Travel Roll that could set the party back. If they choose to ignore the raid, I could make the pirates have new stuff later, either better gear from selling the flowers off, or from some magic items they nick off the Institute. Or they could just get caught up.

If I wanted this to be more complex, I could try to turn it into a mystery of some sort, and shuffle the chart around. WIth the same 4 entries, it could be more of a race between Fontaine and his Pirates to find the Crocus for a big payout, while the Institute could want it for a rare research specimen that nobody can find. The party can engage in the race, which will add extra nodes to the map, and entangling everything.

If using the latter example, I would add an extra node once the party found out about the Crocus. That would be the first big flag to add another complication, item or location. If a Contact came up, it could be someone else who might know whereabouts. If a location came up, it could be found there, OR it could be a place where a clue is. If another item came up, someone could be willing to trade it for the flower, might be necessary to find the flower, or it could be added to one of the inventories of any other groups. Or hell, it could be a side treasure they find.

The thing to note is that with a Plot Map is that you can either roll randomly or you can pick. If you for sure want the flower to be in the mines, you can just stick the mine on the map and connect the flower to it. Think in terms how different items can be connected. A node should not be isolated from the other nodes. Someone can want it, work with, hate, oppose, require… any sort of adjective or adverb or verb or whatever, but everything should have a relation to something on the map, connecting things closer. The more an item gets connected to multiple things, the more entangled it is.

I wish my game was still going so I could roll on this during random travel rolls in plains, but hopefully this was at least a little interesting to think about.